The present invention relates to a home laundry drier.
More specifically, the present invention relates to a rotary-drum home laundry drier with steam generator, to which the following description refers purely by way of example.
As is known, present rotary-drum home laundry driers generally comprise a substantially parallelepiped-shaped outer box casing; a cylindrical bell-shaped drum for housing the laundry to be dried, and which is housed in axially rotating manner inside the casing to rotate about its horizontally oriented longitudinal axis, directly facing a laundry loading and unloading opening formed in the front face of the casing; a door hinged to the front face of the casing to rotate to and from a closing position in which the door rests completely against the casing to close the opening in the front face of the casing and seal the revolving drum; and an electric motor assembly for rotating the drum about its longitudinal axis inside the casing.
Rotary-drum home laundry driers of the above type also comprise a closed-circuit, hot-air generator designed to circulate inside the revolving drum a stream of hot air with a low moisture content, and which flows through the revolving drum and over the laundry inside the drum to rapidly dry the laundry.
In the most widely marketed driers, the closed-circuit, hot-air generator comprises an air/air heat exchanger and an electric heater located one after the other along an air recirculating conduit, the two ends of which are connected to the revolving drum, on opposite sides of the latter; and an electric centrifugal fan or similar located along recirculating conduit to produce, inside the recirculating conduit, an airflow which flows through the revolving drum. The air/air heat exchanger provides for rapidly cooling the airflow from the revolving drum to condense the surplus moisture in the airflow; and the heater provides for rapidly heating the airflow from the heat exchanger back to the revolving drum, so that the air flowing into the drum is rapidly heated to a temperature higher than or equal to that of the same air flowing out of the revolving drum.
Some more recently marketed rotary-drum driers also feature a pressurized-steam generator which, at the end of the drying cycle, feeds a jet of steam into the revolving drum to eliminate or at least greatly reduce wrinkling of the fabrics produced during the drying cycle.
Currently used steam generators have substantially the same structure as ordinary irons with a separated boiler, and comprise a demineralized-water reservoir housed in the highest part of the household appliance casing for easy manual refill with distilled/demineralized-water; and an electric steam-generating boiler normally located below the demineralized-water reservoir and connected to it by a suitable connecting pipe. Water flows by gravity into the electric boiler under control of an electrovalve or similar placed along the connecting pipe.
Finally, the pressurized-steam generator comprises a steam injection nozzle which is located inside the casing, faced to the inside of the revolving drum, and is structured for projecting jets of low-pressure steam towards the laundry inside the revolving drum; and a steam exhaust manifold connecting the outlet of the electric steam-generating boiler to the steam injection nozzle for channeling the low-pressure steam produced by the boiler directly to the nozzle.
Since part of the low-pressure steam produced by the electric steam-generating boiler condenses while flowing along the steam exhaust manifold, the pressurized-steam generator is also provided with a water/steam separating chamber which is located along the steam exhaust manifold, immediately upstream of the steam injection nozzle, and is structured to restrain the condensed-water droplets swept by the stream of low-pressure steam along the steam exhaust manifold towards the nozzle; and with a siphon-shaped drain pipe connecting the water/steam separating chamber to a condensed-water canister located on the bottom of the cabinet, for channeling the condensed-water entrapped into the water/steam separating chamber to the condensed-water canister.